There was a time when respect was earned by learning. People who studied hard, accumulated degrees, mastered facts and logic were admired. They didn’t need followers; they had knowledge. They didn’t need virality; they had depth.

That world is gone.

Fame today is not built in libraries or laboratories but in the palm of a hand. A ring light replaces a classroom. A viral clip replaces a thesis. And the more lurid, outrageous, emotional, and dishonest the content is, the faster the fame spreads. The algorithms demand provocation, not proof. They reward outrage, not understanding.

And people are responding exactly as the system intends: they’re dropping degrees, skipping college, deciding that years of expensive education aren’t worth it in a world where clout is free and clicks are currency. AI will write the papers anyway. Tuition is a fortune. Morality is optional. Why struggle through years of learning when you can fabricate a persona, press “upload,” and watch the world react?

For the first time in history, the older generation will have far more education than the young. Degrees are becoming relics. Expertise is becoming an antique. And winning hearts and minds through argument — the old democratic ideal — is becoming a luxury.

Politics is drifting toward the young, the uninformed, the inflamed, the furious, the ones who know how to play the game of attention better than the game of truth.

Hasan Piker doesn’t win debates; he wins followers. Comedian David Smith isn’t famous for jokes; he’s famous for attacking fellow Jews, because tearing down your own people brings clicks in a sick digital economy.

And here is the crisis for the Jewish people: We are the People of the Book trying to survive in a world where books don’t matter. We are a civilization built on reason, argument, text, questioning — and we cannot comprehend why we’re losing the PR battle against influencers who deal only in emotion, rage, and spectacle.

We fight with facts. They fight with feelings.

We build logic. They build engagement.

We look for truth. They look for traction.

And so a terrifying question hangs in the air: Must Jews abandon their values to survive? Must we trade nuance for noise?
Must we jump into the sewer of social-media fabrication because that is the only battlefield the world seems to care about? Must we out-viral our enemies just to protect ourselves from the lies, the hatred, and the persecution that spread faster than any truth we offer?

Or is there a third way — a way to fight fiercely without becoming the thing we oppose? A way to compete in the digital arena without destroying the intellectual soul that has kept us alive for 3,000 years?

This is the defining challenge of the modern Jewish experience. Not whether we can win a debate — we always could.
But whether debate still matters.

And if it doesn’t, then the Jewish people must decide how to defend themselves in a world where vanities, not virtues, are the currency of influence.

The People of the Book didn’t choose this kind of world. But we must learn how to survive it — without losing who we are.